


Battle of the Hopeless Crushes

by indevan



Series: Yellow Lighter [4]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Loss of Parent(s), M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-15
Updated: 2015-06-15
Packaged: 2018-04-04 12:51:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4138245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indevan/pseuds/indevan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Akashi was a child, he used to wish, foolish as it sounded.  Every chance he got, he wished for someone to love.  The person never had a face or a personality, but he wished to find someone beyond the trappings of the rarified air of his life.  Someone who would accept him for him and love him as passionately as he felt he could love someone.  Eventually, though, he just started wishing that his mother would get better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Battle of the Hopeless Crushes

**Author's Note:**

> while this is part of the series, other than a mention of Hayama/Izuki, there isn't much from the previous parts so it could be read as a standalone.

When Akashi was a child, he used to wish, foolish as it sounded.  Every chance he got, he wished for someone to love.  The person never had a face or a personality, but he wished to find someone beyond the trappings of the rarified air of his life.  Someone who would accept him for him and love him as passionately as he felt he could love someone.

Eventually, though, he just started wishing that his mother would get better.  Seeing her in the hospital bed, all tubes and whirring, pumping machines, it didn’t look like his mother.  His mother who was music and light.  Who would cradle his face between her hands and say, “Look at my beautiful little boy!”  Who gave him an escape from the pressures of his life.  A release valve, almost.  She was not herself in that bed and no matter how hard he wished, how much he wanted, she didn’t get better.

The house was like a mausoleum.  Colder than before and chilled, empty.  Echoing steps and darked, closed off rooms.  School was a respite, if only for a little while.  Even then, even with all of that, he had his self-assurance.  The foregone conclusion that he would never fail at anything.

Now he is uncertain.  His world feels off-kilter, out of alignment.  Everything is tilted like some kind of Wonderland.  It has nothing to do with his defeat, his reclamation of self.  It has everything to do with the person he least suspected.

The person in his wishes never had a face.  No amount of imagination could reach reality, he realizes.  Because reality is so much more sobering than any image he could conjure up in his head.  Furihata Kouki is so very normal.  He didn’t even notice him at first.  It wasn’t until after the game, his defeat, did he realize that he couldn’t keep his mind off of him.  Thoughts that were idle turned into thoughts of him.  The tremble of his lip and the widening of his eyes.  How he wished he would look at him differently.  Without trepidation or worry.  Off the court.

He isn’t a complete stranger to crushes.  Midorima, in middle school.  Nothing ever came of it but before everything spiraled into oblivion, he had had a crush on him.  Still, regardless of previous crushes, the fact is that in matters of the heart, Akashi is very, very inexperienced.

His first kiss was at a party in middle school.  Kise pinched his lips and put them on his because the bottle pointed at him.  The only time the spinning bottle did.  Kise’s lips tasted like illegally procured beer.  He never said at the time that it was his first kiss.  He always let on that he was more experienced than he was.  It wasn’t that he lied about conquests--he just didn’t say that there were none.

Today they sit together on the court, a miraculous reunion, as Hayama’s Seirin boyfriend would say.  The topic turns to sex as it often does.  They’re teenaged boys and, it seems, everyone but him is sexually active.  His crush on Midorima has faded to nothingness, replaced by the uncertain image of Furihata.  He drapes his arm over the ball and catches it between it and his outstretched legs.

“It’s so hard,” Kise laments. “I’m sick of hook-ups.”

He fluffs his hair with his fingers and sighs dramatically.  Aomine nods.

“I mean, as long as it’s safe, it’s whatever but I’m getting bored.” He stretches his arms up and avoids Kuroko’s eye.  When they have conversations like this, he doesn’t look at him.  That space between ex-boyfriends and new friends.

“Find someone,” Midorima puts in as if it’s easy.  Then again, it seems that his soulmate miraculously appeared to him grinning like he knew a secret and spinning a ball on his index finger.

“The joys of routine sex, yeah?” Aomine wiggles his brows. “What’s that like, Tetsu?”

It’s an olive branch.  Kuroko nods, acknowledging, accepting.

“It’s...nice.  I haven’t been with anyone else.” Studiously avoids Aomine’s eye. “But I like that option.  I think Kagami-kun likes that he can show me how he cares when he can’t think of the words.”

He hugs his knees to his chest and smiles a secret smile.  Akashi looks at it, thinks about it, wants it.

“Sex is weird,” Murasakibara drawls.  He produces a bag of chips from the plastic shopping bag next to him and tears it open. “Like someone sticking their finger up your nose.”

Aomine snorts.

“What do you and peek-a-boo get up to?”

“Ehh?  Peek-a-boo?”

Aomine puts his hand over his left eye and says, “Bangs.”

“Oh, Tatsu-chin.”

Akashi notes the switch to the first name.  That’s new.  He’s chomping on chips with gusto now, a blush spreading over his nose and across the crest of his cheekbones.

“Well?”

“We’re having sex,” he says, the words blunt and rendered even moreso by the mouth full of chips.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Midorima says, maybe reflexively.

Everything comes back to sex.  Akashi would prefer if they went back to playing three-on-three.  He’s kind of sick of it but saying so would show his hand--or lack thereof.

“Sounds nice.” Kise sighs. “I like someone but he’s so far away now and I’m soooo not into long distance.”

He makes a whinnying whine sound and flicks his earring with one finger.

“‘Someone,’” Aomine says with a sniff. “Just say you mean your former captain.  Eyebrows.”

“Eyebrows, bangs--you need better descriptors, Aomine-kun.”

He bares his teeth at Kuroko but it melts into a smile because he can never glower at him for long.  Kise, meanwhile, huffs and looks away.  Akashi manages to stay quiet and unnoticed.  No one knows about his crush except maybe Kuroko who saw that scene in the gym the other week.  So embarrassing.  Everything had frozen up and he could hardly get words out.  The only positive takeaway was that Furihata was equally awkward.  Maybe he has a chance.  Maybe, maybe.

“Can we play again?” he asks rather than say any of this out loud.  Kuroko is looking at him, his eyebrows raised half a measure.

“I’m not done,” Murasakibara whines as he shakes his snack bag.

Aomine nods and he feels subtly betrayed that even he doesn’t want to continue playing street ball.  He sniffles and curls his lip up at himself.  Ah.  Despite how much time he spends outdoors either on the court or slogging around up to his shins in muddy water, he knows that Aomine has seasonal allergies.  He remembers at Teiko he would spend several months sniffing and sneezing even though he tried to hide it.

“I have a headache,” he says and, a sure tell, he rubs the area between his eyebrows.  Sinuses. “Tetsu, can I walk you back?”

It’s decided--Akashi overruled.  It’s new ground and he tries not to let it get to him.

“Thank you, Aomine-kun, but you can just walk me to Maji Burger.”

Aomine waggles his brows and says, “Ooh, hot date?  Kagami sure is a big spender.”

“It’s familiar and I like it,” he replies. “The location was my suggestion.”

They rise and disperse and Akashi follows them almost aimlessly.  He knows that he has to go to the train station with Murasakibara but he doesn’t follow him.  Instead he watches Kise trail after Aomine and Kuroko, talking nonstop.  Watches Takao Kazunari pull up on a bicycle and say, “Beep beep, Shin-chan” and Midorima get in the back of the rickshaw.  Watches him pedal away.

“Aka-chin, are you coming?”

Murasakibara is half-turned with two chips in his mouth that make him look like a duck.

“In a minute.  I’ll catch up with you at the station.”

He isn’t sure why he made up his mind so quickly but he waves, takes off.  He has somewhere to be.

\--

The train ride home is long and he shouldn’t be putting it off.  Still, something in his mind clicked off, no on.  Watching Kuroko go to his date.  Hearing everyone talk.  It wasn’t the sex thing, which he’d rather ignore at this point, but wanting to find someone.  Make that connection.

He has no idea where he lives so he goes to the school.  It’s even more foolish to think he’s there.  He can’t _live_ there, after all.  Somehow, luck is with him because Furihata is in the gym.  He hasn’t thought this far ahead but there he is and there they are.

“Um.”

He hates how timid he sounds.  It isn’t him.  Seeing Furihata makes him feel out of sorts.  He doesn’t know why he has such a visceral effect on him and so immediately.  Furihata turns and looks at him, blinking slowly in recognition.  He’s poised to throw a free throw, his knees bent and his arms cocked, ready to shoot.  He rights himself and tucks the ball under one arm.

“How did you know I’d be here?”

“I didn’t.” He rubs the nape of his neck and shifts from foot to foot.

Furihata walks towards him and uses a forearm to wipe his face.

“Are you alright?” he asks.

“Can we go for a walk?”

Furihata looks surprised, straightening his back and blinking rapidly.

“Ah--uh--okay.”

He puts the ball back into the bin and joins him back at the door.  Akashi starts walking, dragging his feet only so Furihata can fall in step.  They walk away from the gymnasium, their footsteps the only sound in the still, afternoon air.

“Why?” Furihata asks after a moment.

He looks at him in this unabashed way that makes Akashi falter.  The look has a complete lack of artifice, no pretention.  It reminds him, somehow, of Aomine when he first met him.  The look is less guarded but that look is potent and so different from those who he grew up with.

“Why what?” he finds himself asking, feeling silly as he does.

“Why me?”

He considers it.

“I don’t know.  I just know that I haven’t been able to get you out of my head since the Winter Cup.”

He doesn’t say anything about wishes or how he wants him to see him for who he is.  Whoever that is.

“Really?”

He sounds so genuinely surprised that it makes his chest clench.  They walk together for a little bit in silence.  The air between them isn’t charged with sexual energy but it isn’t completely empty either.

“When I was a kid,” Furihata says after a moment and then stops.  Frowns at himself. “You won’t believe me.”

“Try me.”

He sighs and stops.  Leans against a building and puts a hand over his eyes as a visor.

“When I was a kid,” he starts again, “My big brother got his heart broken so he wanted to do this...game, I guess.  We would write out a list of traits for someone who couldn’t possibly exist and that would be who we fell in love with.  And we wouldn’t let ourselves find anyone else until we met that person.”

That’s--odd.  It makes him think of his wishes but almost in reverse.

“My list,” he continues, “said that my person would have eyes that were two different colors and cherry red hair.”

He can’t stop himself when he says, “Well one of those isn’t true anymore.”

Furihata laughs softly.

“I guess, but, when I saw you on those steps--you probably don’t even remember me being there.” He does. “I mean, you were terrifying but more than just that.  It was surprising because.”

He stops abruptly and lifts one shoulder in a half-shrug.

“I wish I’d made a better impression.”

He laughs again and says, “It was memorable.”

For the wrong reasons.  It wasn’t him but it was.  Is.  He isn’t sure sometimes.  He’s read online and most headmates don’t use the same name.

“And what is your impression now?”

“That you’re bad at flirting.”

It’s so surprising that even Furihata looks shocked that he says it.  Akashi can’t help but laugh.  He isn’t wrong.  He is inexperienced and unskilled in the art of flirting.

“But I’m your dream person,” he says and Furihata responds by scuffing his foot on the ground.

“Coincidence.”

Probably but he likes the sound of it.  Maybe bringing up the wishes won’t be so far-fetched.  But he withholds that information.

“So you like me?” Furihata asks.  He’s surprised by his sudden boldness and so is he, it seems.  His eyes widen and he bites his lip.

“I do.”

It’s easy to say and those two words make a weight he didn’t know was there lift off his chest.

“But why?”

He has dreadful self-esteem and it makes Akashi’s heart hurt.  He’s never had that problem, really.  This is the first time he’s felt out of sorts, really.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you’re a Ferrari,” he says, “and I’m a...a...Corolla.”

He tries to think of a good line to respond to that.  Anything at all.

“No.”

He isn’t feeling very Ferrari-like right now, honestly, but he doesn’t mind it.  He kind of likes how Furihata makes him feel this way.  It’s different and new.

“I have to go,” he says after that. “The train.”

Furihata nods and it’s like their moment is over, not broken but put on hold.  He holds his hand out.

“Your e-mail?” he asks and then smiles shyly.

\--

Somehow, for some reason, Murasakibara is waiting for him at the train station.  His train ride is longer and yet there he is.

“You waited?”

“You said you’d be right there.” He shrugs. “I was on the phone with Tatsu-chin.”

Akashi nods and sits next to him, thinking it over.  The next train isn’t due for a little while.  Whether it’s his or Murasakibara’s, it doesn’t matter.

“What made you realize you liked him?”

His eyebrows arch in surprise before his face reverts to its usual look.

“He treated me well,” he says finally. “He doesn’t make fun of me for not making facial expressions.  He looks at me like...there’s something there.”

He isn’t usually this candid and Akashi nods along.

“We feel things in the same sorta way,” he continues. “Different from how other people do.”

He honestly isn’t expecting all of that.  A true huge confession.  He curses himself for thinking the answer would be “he gives me sweets” or something.  His former teammate isn’t that one-dimensional.

“I like someone,” he says finally. “And I think he might like me back.”

“Eh?  Who?”

“Someone…”

He isn’t ready to say it to anyone yet.  He wants to keep Furihata’s name inside for a little longer.  A secret, almost.  Another wish.  If you say your wish out loud, it doesn’t come true, after all.

 


End file.
